


And Suddenly Your Parents Hate You And Your Brother's Gay

by eloquencejones



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Baby dirk, Childhood, Gen, I just couldn't get it out of my head, Missing Scene, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquencejones/pseuds/eloquencejones
Summary: The princess commercial had some interesting things to say, and maybe if Bart paid attention it would bring back some long lost memories...





	

**Author's Note:**

> So the weird princess commercial put this in my head and I couldn't get it out.  
> Many many thanks to renderednull for being my invaluable beta <3

_“Hey Bart I got clothes, this is all I could find, I stole it from downstairs, so… Bart?” Ken stood in the doorway holding what looked like a bellhop uniform. Bart looked at him, unsure how she felt._

 

_“Why are you in such a hurry?” she asked_

 

_“Well we’ve got places to go… right?” he seemed concerned by her reluctance, it was pretty uncommon..._

 

_“Everything is connected” the woman on the commercial interrupted in the background._

 

_“Maybe we could just stay here, and watch TV. They got these shows in between shows that show you things you can buy in a store.” she told him, trying to convince him that maybe they could just stay for a little longer._

 

_“Commercials?”_

 

_“Yea. They’re terrific.”_

 

_“Okay.” his expression softened, and he crossed over to join her on the bed._

 

_“It’s like you wake up one morning…” the princess was looking a little crazy now, drawing Bart’s attention._

 

_“Commercials it is.”_

 

_“… and suddenly your parents hate you and your brother’s gay.” Wait, that was..._

 

\----

 

“Marzanna, Marzanna,” her brother’s voice cut through the meadow and she lifted her head to watch his progress as he rushed towards her.

“What is it, Svlad?” she asked, sitting up abruptly when she saw the distressed look on the younger boy’s face.

“It happened again, I just had a- a- an idea, that was all. The other kids say I’m psychic, they say I’m a freak!”

“Tell me everything,” Marzanna patted the ground beside her and waited patiently while Svlad made himself comfortable on the clover-strewn grass. He launched into an explanation, a somewhat meandering tale of how his peculiar gift had caused him trouble this time.

There had been a quiz, and Svlad, always desperate for friends, had offered to help some of the other boys study. He'd made up some practice quizzes for them, practice quizzes that had turned out to contain the exact questions the teacher had written for the real test, punctuation and all.

One of the boys had been caught with the practice test and every single boy who had one had ended up getting detention - they all claimed Svlad had given them the tests three days earlier, but they hadn't been believed because the teacher had only written the test two days before. The boys, with the straightforward logic of children, had decided that Svlad was psychic and it was all just a ploy to get them in trouble, leaving him more unpopular than ever.

“But I didn’t! I just thought those would be the best questions to study! And they were! I didn’t do it _deliberately_ .” Svlad complained to his sister, his face a picture of injured despair “It wasn’t my fault the questions were the exact same, _and_ I still got in trouble anyway because they all said it was me! I can just… see these things. Why can’t anybody else?”

“I dunno,” Marzanna had to admit. “Seems pretty obvious to me. I came out here to the meadow because I knew it was where I needed to be,” a safe, comfortable place where Svlad could vent his frustrations where nobody could hear. That made sense. The universe wanted her to protect Svlad, that was her job and she knew it, she could see it mapped out before her as easily as he could.

“You’re the only person who gets it,” he told her. “You’re not going anywhere, right?”

“I’ll always be where I need to be, and where I need to be is right here.”

The conversation was interrupted by their mother calling them for dinner, but Marzanna could see Svlad’s despondent expression was beginning to change to a hint of a smile, so she was happy to shove herself to her feet and hold out a hand to her brother. He took it, the warm grasp solidifying the sentiment she had expressed. It was the two of them against the world, leaves in the stream of creation, together.

Even when they drifted apart, they came together again eventually. Marzanna was sent upstairs after dinner, but the crack of leather and the sound of Svlad crying out had her creeping from her room to his. She waited there, sitting on his bed with a tube of ointment and a storybook - Hansel and Gretel, Svlad's favourite - until he was sent up as well. She held him as he cried and helped him get ready for bed, staying beside him until he fell asleep.

“It is good that you look after your brother,” their mother told her as she came to ensure Marzanna herself went to bed, “He is not good at taking care of himself.”

“I know mom, I’ll always look after him,” she promised. She didn’t explain what she knew with such certainty, that the universe wanted it that way, she’d tried to explain it once before and her parents had given her panicked looks and told her not to talk like that, so she’d never tried again.

“Until he has a wife who can do it for him,” her mother replied cheerfully, and Marzanna laughed along and said goodnight, but it didn’t sit well with her. It just didn’t feel… right. Call it a hunch, but she didn’t think a wife was going to take over looking after Svlad.

It took her a long time to get to sleep that night, something just wouldn’t let her rest and she spent a long time tossing and turning before finally drifting into a fitful sleep.

It wasn’t until much later that she realised why – that was the last day things were normal, the last day before everything began to change.

 

\----

 

When she looked back on it, later, before she started forgetting, she wondered what was really the beginning of it all. Maybe it started the first time Svlad crossed the road on a whim, just before a water pipe that would have soaked him burst. He’d seen a leaf he wanted to pick up, and his parents accepted that explanation. It was all just a coincidence, the first time.

Maybe it had been when the kid who’d been bullying Svlad had tripped and broken his leg, and sworn up and down that it was all Marzanna’s fault, even though nobody saw her go anywhere near him.

They were starts, of a kind, but where it really began was the next morning, when she went downstairs for breakfast and found her parents arguing. There was a letter open on the table, Marzanna recognised the letterhead as being from school. She edged closer to try and see what it was about, but her mother spotted her and snatched it up before she could see.

“You were supposed to look out for him!” she yelled, brandishing the letter like a weapon. Her father, too, turned to fix her with a disapproving stare, and she couldn’t understand why they were both angry with her.

“What’s everybody yelling about?” Svlad’s voice cut through the tableaux and Marzanna turned to him, resisting the urge to shrug; she did not think it would go down well with their parents.

“We received a letter from your school,” their father explained, tone serious and disapproving.

Svlad’s expression suddenly morphed into one of abject guilt and Marzanna frowned, confused. It was so rare that her little brother looked genuinely guilty about anything, most of the time he just tries to protest his innocence, or explain himself, or… anything except looking like he knew exactly what was in that letter and how it was his fault.

“Svlad… what did you do?” she asked quietly.

“It was just… it was an experiment… I wanted to…see…” Svlad tried to explain himself, his voice small, but the twin glares from their parents had him trailing off. Marzanna was no closer to understanding what was going on.

“We have had enough of this.” Their father said firmly, their mother looked about to object but he cut her off and continued “Svlad, we are sending you somewhere you can learn some discipline. Where you will be properly discouraged from… from this!” he brandished the letter again.

“Where?” Svlad asked with wide eyes.

“Military school.” Was the blunt response, and that… that was that. The decision was made. No more arguing, no more protests, and if they even tried, they were cut off every time.

Marzanna and Svlad were sent to their rooms for the rest of the day, being snapped at every time they so much as stepped out of the door. It was hours before Marzanna could sneak down to the kitchen and find the letter, lying abandoned on the table still. She read it by the moonlight streaming in through the window, and learnt the terrible secret that had earned her parents’ ire.

Svlad had been seen by a teacher, kissing another boy.

Within a few days he was gone and Marzanna felt empty. Wrong. Like she’d strayed from the path she was supposed to be on. Something terrible was going to happen, she could _feel_ it.

 

\----

 

Three weeks after Svlad had been sent away, they received a visit from a Major Riggins. He was a well-spoken, fatherly sort of man who calmly explained to their parents (while Marzanna eavesdropped from the stairs) that he would like to take Svlad out of school. He worked for a separate branch of the military, a branch that had use for her brother’s talents.

Her parents feigned ignorance, but Marzanna knew what talents they were talking about, and while she didn’t know what branch he was from, it didn’t sound good. There was a project they wanted Svlad to be part of. Project Blackwing.

Riggins had brought Svlad with him, to tell their parents (who still regarded him with harsh, distrustful eyes) that he wanted to go, that Blackwing was going to help him. That it was going to be good. The visit was a fleeting one; Riggins got his permission much quicker than he was probably expecting, and it was made quite clear to him that they wanted Svlad out of the house.

Marzanna met her brother’s eyes as he was lead back out to the dark car sitting in the drive, and that was the last time she saw him.

 

\----

 

She did see Riggins again, the following year.

There was a new science teacher at school, who made her skin crawl. He was softly spoken, neat and intelligent; he was a good teacher, but there was something about the way he looked at her, the way he looked at all the girls in the class, that set her on edge. One morning she knew, with a sudden clarity, that he had to die. _Deserved_ it. She broke a beaker and slashed his throat without even thinking about it.

There was chaos at first, and then a lot of sitting, and then a lot of questions. They didn’t get any answers from Marzanna, so they looked for evidence elsewhere. They found a lot of unpleasant pictures on his computer, and then there were even more questions, and then there was Riggins. She was sitting in a police interview room, still stained with long-dried blood, waiting to see where the universe was going to take her, and he walked in.

She knew, then, that even though he’d taken Svlad away from her, she had to go with him. It was her job to protect her brother, and she couldn’t do that if she didn’t know where he was.

“We’re going to help you,” he told her. She didn’t care, her attention elsewhere. “We’re going to help you find a way to use your gift to do good.”

“Can I see Svlad?” she asked instead.

“Maybe, if you behave, and do what we say.”

She believed him, then, because she knew the universe wanted her to go with him, and why would it want that if it wouldn’t lead her to Svlad? So she followed him out of the police station,  into a big black car, and never went home again.

 

\---

 

_...and suddenly your parents hate you and your brother’s gay._

_Everything is connected._

 

_“I never had a surprise before,” she turned her head away from the commercial and focused on Ken, who shrugged, unsure what to say._

 

_“I only got two bullets left…” she couldn’t put her finger on what she was feeling, on the strange commercial and what deep, buried ...something it was trying to drag out of her._

 

_“Bart. Two bullets. Seriously? That’s your excuse? I saw you kill someone by waving at them.”_

_“All that stuff you said to me about life and purpose and stuff? You think maybe… surprises are good sometimes? Like, there can be such a thing as a surprise that helps you?”_   


“Yes. I do.”


End file.
